We could have scored on most, or every single run from inside the 10; also we could have been stopped on all but a couple, or every single one of them. The difference is how well (or how poorly) we ran it.

If we go 10-of-18, instead of 6-of-18, that difference matters.

Not necessarily. All that matters is that you score. If you get a first-and-goal at the 1 and run four straight times before punching it in, that counts just as much as if you score on first down. If you run twice, then throw a TD pass, that counts, too. If you throw a TD pass on first down, that counts, too.

All formulas are made up. analysts crunch numbers and try to come up with a good statistical formula that actually correlates to winning. None are perfect, but why would anyone ignore something that takes critical data into account and shows a high correlation to winning ?

Obviously the formula you produced is not meant to be taken seriously.
A team could pass for 500 yards and 4 td's and run one time for 1 yard and if they scored more than the other team they would be an efficient running team by that formula.

Why dont you actually test the data for yourself and see if the passing efficiency formula proves true - all you have to do is pull up game statistics and plug the numbers in.

And after that if you still believe that the run game is being slighted in its importance to winning. Then why dont you do some research and see if you can find a good formula to measure running efficiency then see if it actually correlates to winning. Maybe you will find something that no one else has found yet.

You can say the same thing about ANYPA formula Adam is using. His fomula doesn't account for how the Ints were thrown.

The team that lost could have had higher ANYPA all through out the game but in the end come out with lower ANYPA because of the last minute hail mary int.

You can claim the winning team won because it passed better according to ANYPA but that's not completely true.

Regardless of how efficiently we pass, it still has to be better than our opponents. in other words, even if we field a 'D-' in passer efficiency, we'll beat our opponents with the passer efficiency of an 'F'.

To make the cowboys win more games, what facet of Passing Efficiency do we need to improve - our offenses own passing efficiency, our defenses ability to decrease opponents' passing efficiency, or just timing?

1. How does our season overall passer efficiency stack up versus the 8 division winners? If we're comparable, then our offense seems to good enough to win games.

2. If our opponents' passing efficiency averaged over the season scores high, then we need to improve our defense.

3. Timing - we may very well have a case where both our offenses and defenses passer efficiencies are fantastic, we just have bad timing for when it occurs.

Say in Game #1, Even if we have an 'A-' in passing efficiency, if our opponents' passing efficiency was an 'A+', we're going to lose 80% of the time. Then, in Game #2, our defense improved and opponent's passer efficiency was a 'B', but then our offense had bad timing to put up a 'C+'. Over the course of a season, our efficiencies look sufficient, but we still lose too many games.

You can say the same thing about ANYPA formula Adam is using. His fomula doesn't account for how the Ints were thrown.

The team that lost could have had higher ANYPA all through out the game but in the end come out with lower ANYPA because of the last minute hail mary int.

You can claim the winning team won because it passed better according to ANYPA but that's not completely true.

The point is that a team with a "higher" ANYPA throughout the game wouldn't need to throw a last minute Hail Mary.

This scenario only seems plausible if the two teams' ANYPA were close and being the "higher" ANYPA doesn't make a difference. Or if the higher ANYPA team was losing the turnover battle or Devin Hester goes for 2 punt return TDs on us...but that's why it was stated 80% of the victors have a better rating, not 100%.

You can say the same thing about ANYPA formula Adam is using. His fomula doesn't account for how the Ints were thrown.

The team that lost could have had higher ANYPA all through out the game but in the end come out with lower ANYPA because of the last minute hail mary int.

You can claim the winning team won because it passed better according to ANYPA but that's not completely true.

First of all, the flaw in xwalker's ridiculous formula isn't because of a correlation, it's because it doesn't measure what he wants to claim that it measures. So it's not even close to the same thing as the flaws in most statistics, such as the "cheap" Hail Mary interception, or the interception that wasn't the quarterback's fault affecting his passer rating, etc.

Secondly, in most games, the ANYPAs for both teams aren't close enough that one fewer interception by the losing team would make any difference in which team ended up with the higher ANYPA. In only five out of the 256 games this season would it have changed who finished higher. Even if all five of those were because of a "cheap" INT at the end of the game, that would hardly affect the correlation -- it would mean that "only" 77.5 percent of the teams that had a higher ANYPA won the game.

It's also more likely that the losing team could have had a lower ANYPA all game but bumped it up in the final minutes with meaningless yards against a prevent defense. But it probably happened only a few times, and it likely is balanced out by the cheap stats going the other way. In the end, the correlation probably doesn't change much at all -- and probably is affected even less by those types of things than by all of the other oddities that can happen in games and affect who wins and loses.

Regardless of how efficiently we pass, it still has to be better than our opponents. in other words, even if we field a 'D-' in passer efficiency, we'll beat our opponents with the passer efficiency of an 'F'.

To make the cowboys win more games, what facet of Passing Efficiency do we need to improve - our offenses own passing efficiency, our defenses ability to decrease opponents' passing efficiency, or just timing?

1. How does our season overall passer efficiency stack up versus the 8 division winners? If we're comparable, then our offense seems to good enough to win games.

2. If our opponents' passing efficiency averaged over the season scores high, then we need to improve our defense.

3. Timing - we may very well have a case where both our offenses and defenses passer efficiencies are fantastic, we just have bad timing for when it occurs.

Say in Game #1, Even if we have an 'A-' in passing efficiency, if our opponents' passing efficiency was an 'A+', we're going to lose 80% of the time. Then, in Game #2, our defense improved and opponent's passer efficiency was a 'B', but then our offense had bad timing to put up a 'C+'. Over the course of a season, our efficiencies look sufficient, but we still lose too many games.

As you can see, the team that had the higher ANYPA won 14 of the 16 games (and both of the other games were decided overtime). We had some losses when we passed OK but were not good enough on defense and some when we didn't pass well. One thing that sticks out, though, is that we had only one game when our opponent's ANYPA was really low. Teams finish with an ANYPA of 3.2 or worse almost 20 percent of the time, but we held only one opponent to a number that low.

You're missing the point. It's not about a specific equation, it's about passing effectiveness, no matter how it is measured. You can use any of the ANYPA equations. You can use passer rating. You can use unadjusted yards per pass play. You can use pass success rate or just about any other equation that measures passing effectiveness on a per-play basis. They all end up with close to the same correlations.

Are these your definitions of those terms?

unadjusted yards per pass play = (total passing yards) / attempts

pass success rate = completions / attempts

AdamJT13;4948344 said:

Not at all. There are all kinds of equations and formulas that people use for different purposes that combine different types of factors, both in sports and outside of sports.

If you can correlate without a complicated formula like the simple "equations" above, then this is a non-issue.

AdamJT13;4948344 said:

Except that your equation does not measure running efficiency. It actually measures total points scored, with a small adjustment for rushing yards. All you did was give it an improper name (rushing hardly affects it at all, and it doesn't have anything at all to do with efficiency). If Team A scores 35 points and rushes 20 times for minus-20 yards, and Team B scores 34 points and rushes 20 times for 300 yards, you're really going to claim that your formula indicates that Team A was more efficient at running? That's just silly.

My equation was intended to be silly to make a point. The point being that you can manipulate equations to get a desired result.

ANYPA is defined as passing efficiency by a group of people. Stating that it is an absolute measure of passing efficiency is misleading.

AdamJT13;4948344 said:

That makes no sense. It doesn't even attempt to measure passing, so it can't be used to determine whether passing correlates to winning. You can't just not measure something and then say that must mean it doesn't correlate to something else.

The point of my equation is that randomly defined equations can be wrong even if they correlate to a set of data.

Interceptions alone don't correlate as well as when you include other measures of passing efficiency. They also don't correlate either way in nearly 20 percent of all games, when neither team throws an interception. What determines who wins in those games?

A great set of data to analyze would be from all the games where neither team throws an interception.

Does passing yards or passing average or some other simple stat correlate to winning in those games?

AdamJT13;4948362 said:

Not true at all. As I've said before, running the ball can be useful, even if it doesn't really matter how well you run it. And running backs obviously play a role in the passing game.

That is not my impression of what you have been saying up to this point.

I think most people would agree that the passing game in football has more importance than the running game in the modern era.

When you can do both very well you take the predictablity out of the offense. For some teams that running game means a lot more than to other teams it is part of who they are as an offense and means a lot in terms of their winning and losing. Stats are great but watch the games and the importance some coaches place on their ability to run.

Funny Aikman talked of the importance of it during the Skins vs Seahawks but then what does he know right? I doubt he is a stats guy. :laugh2:

Not necessarily. All that matters is that you score. If you get a first-and-goal at the 1 and run four straight times before punching it in, that counts just as much as if you score on first down. If you run twice, then throw a TD pass, that counts, too. If you throw a TD pass on first down, that counts, too.

We get it -- it doesn't matter how you score. None of those situations has anything to do with the one I described.

If you go 10-of-18 instead of 6-of-18, those were necessarily four more (different) drives that you scored on.

Four touchdowns that you otherwise would not have had, unless for some reason you want to say that all 4 would have been passing TD.

Either yards per pass or net yards per pass play (subtract sack yardage from total yards and add sacks to attempt) also correlate highly. They don't take interceptions into account, though.

pass success rate = completions / attempts

No, that's completion percentage. Success rate is the percentage of plays that are deemed "successful" based on the down and distance. There are various sites that track success rates by their own definitions.

My equation was intended to be silly to make a point. The point being that you can manipulate equations to get a desired result.

And what's the point of that?

ANYPA is defined as passing efficiency by a group of people. Stating that it is an absolute measure of passing efficiency is misleading.

Nobody ever said it's the only measure of passing efficiency.

The point of my equation is that randomly defined equations can be wrong even if they correlate to a set of data.

A great set of data to analyze would be from all the games where neither team throws an interception.

Does passing yards or passing average or some other simple stat correlate to winning in those games?

Net yards per pass play is the same as ANYPA when neither team throws an interception. There were 42 games this season when neither team threw an interception. The team that averaged more net yards per pass play went 29-12-1 (a .702 winning percentage).

Interestingly, games were at least 2.9 times more likely to go into overtime this season when neither team threw an interception. Out of those 42 games above, eight went into overtime. Out of the other 214 games this season, only 14 went into overtime. (It's possible that in several of those, there were no interceptions thrown until overtime, which would make it even more than 2.9 times as likely. Our win over Pittsburgh was one example of that -- the first interception of the game was Carr's in overtime.) In non-overtime games with no interceptions, the team with the higher NYPA went 26-8 (.765). In overtime games, the team with the higher NYPA for the entire game went 3-4-1, but the team with the higher NYPA *in overtime* went 5-2-1.

That is not my impression of what you have been saying up to this point.

Then you haven't paid close attention to what I've said for years.

I think most people would agree that the passing game in football has more importance than the running game in the modern era.

I think people could believe:

importance of passing / importance of running = 60/40

I don't think anyone is going to believe:

importance of passing / importance of running = 99/1

First of all, your use of "passing" and "running" is quite general. I've been very specific -- that how well you run the ball or stop the run, as measured by yards per carry, has almost no effect on winning and losing in the NFL. If you're averaging 3.0 yards per carry, you're getting virtually the same "benefit" from the running game that you would be getting if you were averaging 5.0 YPC. It's hard for some people to believe, but it is true.

And, if you don't pass the ball better than your opponent, then running it better than your opponent has almost no effect on your chances of winning the game. If you pass it worse than your opponent, running it better still has almost no effect on your chances of winning.

So, whatever percentages you want to come up with for the importance of each is fine with me, but it doesn't change the facts about what wins games in the NFL.

When you can do both very well you take the predictablity out of the offense. For some teams that running game means a lot more than to other teams it is part of who they are as an offense and means a lot in terms of their winning and losing. Stats are great but watch the games and the importance some coaches place on their ability to run.

"Placing importance" on running doesn't change whether running it well or poorly affects the outcome of the game. Lots of teams run the ball a lot, and lots of teams pass it a lot. For both types of teams, running it well or poorly hardly affects their chances of winning. If they pass better than their opponents, they almost always win. When they don't, they almost always lose.

For example, the team that passed more effectively went 14-2 in the Redskins' games, while the team that ran more effectively went 9-7. The team that passed more effectively in the Seahawks' games went 14-2, while the team that passed more effectively went 9-7. "Placing importance" on the running game doesn't change the correlation.

We get it -- it doesn't matter how you score. None of those situations has anything to do with the one I described.

If you go 10-of-18 instead of 6-of-18, those were necessarily four more (different) drives that you scored on.

Four touchdowns that you otherwise would not have had, unless for some reason you want to say that all 4 would have been passing TD.

Those aren't all on different drives, you know. If you run it four times from the 1 and finally score on fourth down, you scored just as many TDs on that possession by going 1-for-4 as you would have if you had scored on first down (1-for-1).

We ran the ball 18 times on 15 different possessions inside the opponent's 10-yard line. We scored touchdowns on 10 of those possessions. Another was Romo's kneel-down after Carr's interception against Pittsburgh, putting the ball in the middle of the field for Bailey's winning field goal.

That leaves four possessions all season when we ran the ball inside the opponent's 10 and failed to score a touchdown. One of those was Murray's fumble against the Steelers. On each of the other three, we ran the ball one time inside the 10 from no closer than the 6-yard line -- a third down from the 6 against Tampa Bay, a second down from the 9 against Carolina and a second down from the 6 against Atlanta. Do you know how often runs from the opponent's 6-9 yard line go for touchdowns? About 12 percent of the time. Adrian Peterson had seven carries from there and did not score. Marshawn Lynch had seven carries from there and did not score. Frank Gore had five carries from there and did not score. We had a total of six and did not score (although two of them were followed by TD passes), and *that* is what you say our big problem was this season?

What are your thoughts on including quarterback fumbles and/or receiver fumbles as part of that equation?

I'm all for making stats more accurately reflect what happens -- factor in lost fumbles on runs or passes, take out spikes and kneel-downs, include certain penalties, etc. It's just difficult to get the information for every game.

Those aren't all on different drives, you know. If you run it four times from the 1 and finally score on fourth down, you scored just as many TDs on that possession by going 1-for-4 as you would have if you had scored on first down (1-for-1).

We ran the ball 18 times on 15 different possessions inside the opponent's 10-yard line. We scored touchdowns on 10 of those possessions. Another was Romo's kneel-down after Carr's interception against Pittsburgh, putting the ball in the middle of the field for Bailey's winning field goal.

That leaves four possessions all season when we ran the ball inside the opponent's 10 and failed to score a touchdown. One of those was Murray's fumble against the Steelers. On each of the other three, we ran the ball one time inside the 10 from no closer than the 6-yard line -- a third down from the 6 against Tampa Bay, a second down from the 9 against Carolina and a second down from the 6 against Atlanta. Do you know how often runs from the opponent's 6-9 yard line go for touchdowns? About 12 percent of the time. Adrian Peterson had seven carries from there and did not score. Marshawn Lynch had seven carries from there and did not score. Frank Gore had five carries from there and did not score. We had a total of six and did not score (although two of them were followed by TD passes), and *that* is what you say our big problem was this season?